The Newsletter of the Highlights Inside Calvert Marine Museum • Great White Shark and Northem • Smallest Fossil Mammal from Fossil Club Right Whale Calvert Cliffs Volume 20· Number 1 • Bear-Dogs • Upcoming Field Trips March 2005 • Volunteers of the Year! • Upcoming Lectures Whole Number 66 The ECp·0 Upcoming Paleontology Great White and Northern Right Public Lectures Many of the Miocene-age (20 - 8 million• year-old) whale and dolphin fossils that we collect Anna J. Fuller, Paleontology from Calvert Cliffs, Calvert County, Maryland are Research Intern here at the Calvert Marine shark-tooth-marked, evidence of prehistoric predation or scavenging. Fossilized bones have also Museum will be our guest lecturer on been found in which the tips of broken shark teeth Saturday, April 23rd, 2005. She will deliver a are still imbedded. Evidently, prehistoric cetotheres ·~ublic lecture beginning at 2:30pm in the (an entirely extinct family of filter-feeding whales) jluseum's auditorium on the fossil beaked were prized as prey among Miocene sharks. whales from Calvert Cliffs. It is well known that living sharks scavenge whale carcasses, as you will see in the following And photographs. I was saddened to learn that this right whale was well known to many through the work of The New England Aquarium's (NEAq) right whale Saturday, June 11th, 2005 is the day the aerial survey team. Calvert Marine Museum celebrates World Ocean Day. In addition to the events planned by our Education Department, we will open a new exhibit on the Miocene fossil whale skull that we quarried from St. Mary's County following Hurricane Isabel. We will not have a formal club meeting, however, we will host a public lecture. Dr. Lawrence Barnes, from the Los Angeles County Museum will be our guest lecturer. He is a A great white shark circles a dead northern right whale that is floating belly up. The head-end of the leading authority on fossil whales and will shark is lo~ated at the base of the whale's right speak on the extinct cetotheres (i.e., a family flipper. Photo by Jessica TaylorlNew England ~f extinct filter-feeding whales). Aquarium, January 12, 2005, off the coast of Florida. 2 The Ecphora March 2005 Editor's note: The following information on the wounds sustained from the ship strike in 1991 had northern right whale was taken from correspondence opened and become infected, possibly due to he with Monica Zani (New England Aquarium), and pregnancy. from their Right Whale Research News (Volume 13, For more information on the efforts of the Number 2, Jan. 2005). New England Aquarium to help right whales, visit their web site at: www.newenglandaquarium.org The New England Aquarium's (NEAq) Many thanks to Gregory R. Fairclough, right whale aerial survey team sighted the dead right NOAA Fisheries HMS Division, Saint Petersburg, whale while conducting a standard, daily Early FL for sending the first images of the whale to us. I Warning System (EWS) survey. The primary am mostly indebted to Monica Zani, Assistant objective of these surveys is to locate right whales on Scientist, New England Aquarium, Right Whale their winter calving grounds and report the position Research, for sending the story to us and for in near real time to mariners operating commercial, permission to publish these amazing photographs. military, and other vessels in the area in an attempt to reduce the potential threat of ship collisions to Stephen Godfrey V right whales. As a secondary objective to the work, aerial survey teams photograph each right whale sighted and gather data that will serve as a source of information on the distribution and abundance of Calvert Marine Museum right whales in the calving ground. Volunteers of the Year ... Paleontology volunteers have done exceedingly well this year in that they have received both the Individual and Group Achievemen awards! Pam Platt and Paul Berry are co• recipients of the Calvert Marine Museum's Individual Volunteer-of-the- Year Award. Pam Platt toiled tirelessly on the very difficult preparation work needed to expose the whale skull that we quarried from St. Mary's County following Hurricane Isabel. In addition to everything else Paul Berry does for the Museum (librarian and editor of the Bugeye Times), he also contributes many hours in helping with the cataloging of our paleontology A slightly different view of a great white shark research library! feeding on a dead northern right whale that is The Group Achievement Award went to floating belly up. Photo by Jessica Taylor/New volunteer members of our fossil preparation lab! I England Aquarium, January 12, 2005, off the coast am indebted to all o~r prep lab volunteers for of Florida. without your ongoing efforts, many of the fossils we collect would not' have been prepared. Shortly after her birth in 1991, this northern Congratulations on receiving these awards in right whale was spotted with large propeller cuts recognition of your significant contribution to the along her left flank. She was named Lucky (#2143) Museum an~ our department! because she survived the trauma of a ship strike. Unfortunately, when she was found dead earlier this Stephen Godfrey V year, she was pregnant with her first, near full term, female calf. The right whale aerial survey team moved the carcass to shore and performed a necropsy (an animal autopsy). They found that the Club website: http://www.calvertmarinemuseum.com/cmmfc/index.html Club email: [email protected] 3 The Ecphora March 2005 Bear-Dogs paleontologist there, showed me a bear-dog canine that was very impressive. It's about 2 inches long and I inch wide at its base, compressed laterally George F. Klein (side to side), and re-curved with cutting edges on the front and rear of the tooth. It looked like Bear-dogs were a group of carnivorous tyrannosaur teeth I have collected in Montana , mammals that existed in our area during the Tertiary except the cutting edges on tyrannosaur_teeth are Period. They're called bear-dogs because they have serrated whereas the cutting edges on the bear-dog some characteristics of both bears and dogs. From an tooth are not. evolutionary standpoint, they are more closely related to bears than dogs but retain features of both these animals. Bear-dog tooth (Amphicynodon sp.), second from left, along with three ?Albertosaurus sp. teeth from the Judith River Formation, found in Phillips County, Montana. Scale Bar is in inches. Photo by George Klein. The formations around the Calvert Cliffs area Skeletal reconstructions of (A) the bear-dog, are marine in nature, but fossils of terrestrial animals are found there. All land mammal material from the Amphicyon ingens, and (B) a modern polar bear Ursus arctos, drawn to approximately the same Cliffs is extremely rare and scientifically valuable. scale. (A) Is from Dingus, L. 1996. Next of Kin: This is because terrestrial Miocene exposures are Great Fossils at the American Museum of Natural virtually unknown in the northeastern US. Therefore, History. New York: Rizzoli International any such fossils give us a glimpse of what life was Publications, Inc. and (B) isfrom Turner, A. and M like on land in our area during this period. Anton, 1997. The Big Cats and Their Fossil My research indicates that the earliest bear• Relatives: An Illustrated Guide to Their Evolution dog fossils date to the mid-Eocene (approximately and Natural History. New York: Columbia 44 MYBP) and are from North America (1). Some University Press. bear-dog fossils have been found in Eurasia and date slightly later, so a Eurasian ancestry is not My interest in this group of animals began completely out of the question. By the Miocene, they last summer when I was at the Calvert Marine were distributed throughout Eurasia and North Museum in Solomons, Maryland. The Museum America. They are especially well known from showcases fossils from the Calvert Cliffs Miocene Florida where at least three genera have been -----.. ' age. The Miocene Epoch lasted from reported: Amphicyon, Daphoenodon, and Cynelos approximately 23.8 to 5.3 million years before the (2). Of these, Amphicyon (whose name means present (MYBP). Bill Counterman, the "ambiguous dog") was probably the largest and may have been the largest predator of its time (3). It most Club website: http://www.calvertmarinemuseum.com/cmmfc/index.html Club email: [email protected] 4 The Ecphora March 2005 likely was an ambush hunter and about the size of 3)www.amnh.org/exhibitions/expeditions/treasure f today's grizzly bear. ossil/F ossils/Specimens/ amphicyon-ramoceros.html ----- Bear-dogs were medium to large size predators. One large European species, Amphicyon 4) Wroe, S. et al Australian Journal o/Zoology Vol. major, is estimated to have a body length around 5 to 47, p. 489 - 498 (1999) 6 feet and a weight approaching 1400 lbs (4). Not all bear-dogs were this large some were much smaller. 5)http://www2 .nature.nps. gov/ geology/paleonto logy/ Some of the "bear-like" features that they pub/grd2/gsaOI.htm have are a shorter snout and for some bear-dogs, a plantigrade walk. Today's bears put most of their weight on the heels of their feet whereas today's George Klein P dogs walk digitigrade, with most of their weight on their toes. Digitigrade striding enables an animal to run faster, because it effectively lengthens the lower Martian Fossil Crinoid? leg permitting a longer step. Fossil footprints show that some bear-dogs also walked like a bear in a The author(s) of the following story claims "pacing" style, moving the two left legs and the two that images shot by the Martian Lander Spirit show right legs alternately, although at a somewhat slower evidence of Martian crinoid (sea Lilly) fossils.